ELEAGUE Major Main Qualifier preview

Later today 16 teams of the Main Qualifier will begin fighting for eight spots at the ELEAGUE Major. We've prepared an elaborate preview which delves into all teams, their form and recent results against other participating teams.

Taking place from December 15-18 at the ELEAGUE studios in Atlanta, the ELEAGUE Major Main Qualifier will bring together some of the best teams in the world, such as recent winners OpTic and NiP, among others.

With 12 out of the 16 teams participating sitting in the top 20 of our Team Ranking, and six of them in the top 10, this offline qualifier will be one of, if not the hardest to date.

The qualifier will follow a slightly modified Swiss format, which you could see in play at ESL One New York and ESL One Cologne's Main Qualifier. Once again, the match-ups have been drawn in the first round according to their seeding.

From there on, each round will see teams randomly matched up with teams who have the same record until they reach three wins, at which point they will qualify for the Major, or three losses, to exit the competition.

We have prepared a graphic which will visually explain each round and at which point teams are eliminated or qualify for the Major:

Without further ado, let's delve into the teams participating in the Main Qualifier. Under each team's lineup, you will see results against other participating teams from offline tournaments which took place in the past three months.

Note that matches which had different lineups than the ones participating in the qualifier have been taken out.

As all three CIS-based teams whom we regularly see at international events, Natus Vincere, FlipSid3 and Gambit, made it to ESL One Cologne (and to its playoffs), the CIS Minor Championship prior to the ELEAGUE Major allowed two of the less known teams from the region to make their mark.

One of those two teams are Spirit, who finished second to ALLIN (now Vega Squadron) at the CIS Minor despite besting them in the upper bracket final.

Due to the level of competition, Spirit would have been considered huge underdogs even if they fielded their full lineup. With COLDYY1 unable to attend, there is very little hope for Spirit to win a single match, let alone three which are needed to qualify for the Major.

Since CLG brought in an unproven duo in Ethan and Subroza during the off-season, the American-Canadian team has not attended a big event, compared to about one every month in the first half of the year, including the previous Major which earned them a place at the Main Qualifier.

CLG first showed their new lineup at the first Northern Arena event in Toronto, where they placed 5th-8th with a best-of-three win over NRG, in which the new duo showed why they were given a chance in a Pro League-level team in North America.

reltuC's new CLG have played very few top teams offline

At the second Northern Arena, which took place in early November in Montreal, CLG couldn't repeat their previous success versus Fatih "gob b" Dayik's team as they exited the competition in last place.

While that offline result doesn't bring much hope to their fans, their online record in the past couple of months could, as they finished 5th in ECS Season 2 (two wins away from a place at the finals) with wins over NRG, TSM, and most importantly OpTic on Train, among others.

The Russian-Ukrainian mixture are the second team to come from the CIS Minor Championship, where they finished first with a win over Spirit in the grand final, taking revenge after the upper bracket final loss.

For most of the players, this Main Qualifier will be their first, apart from 19-year-old chopper, who attended ESL One Cologne's qualifier with FLuffy Gangstersand finished last following close matches against mousesports and Renegades.

Vega Squadron's chances are similar to those of Spirit, chopper's team are looking to gain much-needed experience with hopes of upsetting some of the lower-level teams.

TYLOO earned their place at the Main Qualifier with a victory at the Asia Minor, though their route wasn't as dominant as it used to be when facing regional competition.

With a 0-2 loss to VG.CyberZen, they had to fight their way through MVP Project and take revenge on their long-time rivals who took them to three maps, with Cache going to nearly 70 rounds following quadruple mr5 overtime. TYLOO clinched first place in the end, once again defeating Renegades in the grand final, but since then they haven't been very successful internationally.

iBUYPOWER Masters saw the Chinese narrowly defeating Echo Fox on three out of four maps to qualify for IEM Oakland, but they finished 0-5 at the main event after three one-sided matches and two close encounters, with Natus Vincere and Immortals.

TyLoo's latest results put them in the position of a big underdog

Only four days ago, TYLOO finished in a measly fourth place at WCA Finals, where they were expected to at least reach the final if not win it all, with losses to Epsilon and more importantly iGame.com, a team who have just entered the top 30 with their result in China.

Those results suggest TYLOO's form is awful going into the Main Qualifier. With such a limited amount of time it's unlikely captainMo's team have been able to figure out what went wrong, which puts TYLOO in a position of one of the underdogs at the qualifier.

Since HellRaisers added DeadFox, ANGE1's team attended two offline events in close succession, EPICENTER: Moscow, for which they qualified online, and the PGL European Minor.

At one of the biggest events of the second half of the year, HellRaisers surprised by splitting maps with fnatic and Virtus.pro, but it wasn't enough for a playoffs spot as they dropped both maps to SK at the end of the group stage.

With wins over ENCE, Heroic and Space Soldiers, and two extremely close series against GODSENT, the European mixture secured their spot at the Main Qualifier for the third time in a row.

In both of their previous attempts, at the time with Tomáš "oskar" Šťastný in the lineup, HellRaisers were only a few rounds away from qualifying to the Major, but this time the competition will be fiercer than ever. With that said, there are several teams HR should play well against, including mousesports whom they're facing first, but they'll need to be lucky with the random draws to have a chance at going through.

Renegades made their way through to the qualifier via the PGL Asia Minor, which took place at the end of October. Some of the Asian teams, including VG.CyberZen and MVP Project, took the Aussies to close scorelines, but yam's team still made it to the grand final where they lost to TYLOO for the second time in a row.

The Australian side then travelled back to the United States for iBUYPOWER Masters, but their journey there was unsuccessful following losses to Immortals and FaZe, two teams they could encounter at the qualifier.

AZR needs to shake off his poor showing at DreamHack

Their best result this year came at DreamHack ZOWIE Open Winter, where they grabbed silver with a loss to Gambit in the grand final. While they also defeated Cloud9 in groups, it's highly unlikely the two teams will face at the qualifier, as they're part of the same seeding pool.

USTILO and company aren't favored against any of the Heavy-hitters, but most of the other match-ups are looking pretty good, as long as AZR improves on his poor showing at DreamHack Winter, where he hit a few dangerous lows.

As such, pronax's team had to fight their way through the PGL Europe Minor in early November. After an awful start, an overtime loss to Kévin "Ex6TenZ" Droolans's LDLC, GODSENT played several dangerous series in the playoffs, including two against Epsilon. Surviving the Swedish match-up both times, flusha and company avoided elimination and defeated HellRaisers in a rematch to take first place at the Minor.

Two weeks afterwards, GODSENT took part in DreamHack Open Winter and grabbed a semi-final finish in their home country, losing to eventual champions Gambit in a narrow series.

flusha has been his team's best player at most of their events, although znajder played great at the Minor while Lekr0 showed consistency in Jönköping. It seems this team fits the newest addition better than fnatic, so if he and the other two players show up to play again, GODSENT could finish at least somewhere in the 3-2 region.

As we slowly approach #10, we have one of the improving teams as of late, Immortals. Following group stage exits at ELEAGUE Season 2 and ESL Pro League Season 4 Finals, the Brazilians decided to put an end to the Wilton "zews" Prado experiment and added steel, who is a better individual player and seems to fit the team well in terms of leadership.

Shortly after his addition, Immortals won iBUYPOWER Masters and advanced from the group stage at IEM Oakland after playing several maps against other teams participating in the Main Qualifier.

Immortals have quite the history against some of the other participating teams

steel's team advanced to the qualifier through the Americas Minor, where they bested TSM 16-14 on Cache and 2-0'd Cloud9 in the upper bracket final. Their ECS Season 2 Finals journey came to an abrupt end with an overtime loss to Envy and a series with SK, the latter of whom are better than most teams at the qualifier.

As you can see above, Immortals have played seven out of 15 teams taking part in the qualifier in the last month and they defeated most or at least played a close match with them, as is the case with Envy with whom they'll lock horns in the first round. As arguably the best team of the middle group, the Could-be's as we call them, Immortals are looking good for their first Major attendance.

While Immortals have been looking up since the ESL Pro League Season 4 Finals, mousesports have done the exact opposite, losing the last nine offline maps they played over three events.

The São Paulo tournament saw them grabbing three wins in the five-team group A before they exited the competition in semi-finals at the hands of Cloud9. mousesports then travelled to Oakland for IEM, where they finished 0-5 in the group with three of the five losses being to teams who will also be present in Atlanta.

Less than two weeks ago, NiKo's team fell to OpTic in ELEAGUE S2 quarter-finals, adding two more losses to the list of bad results against other teams in the qualifier.

They don't seem to have a problem with specific match-ups, but their current form and map pool is questionable, to say the least, especially with NiKo dropping off heavily at the last couple of events. It's entirely possible he will return to form in time for the qualifier, where his motivation should be at its highest.

If he does, the aforementioned results could mean nothing, as mousesports lacked their best player in most of them while nobody but chrisJ was there to step up consistently. If he doesn't, mousesports might have to skip a Major for the first time since ESL One Katowice 2015.

One thing going for mousesports is that they are part of the first seeding pool due to placing 9th-12th at ESL One Cologne, and as such will get to veto three maps.

After months of struggling in the first half of 2016, Envy finally seemed to be doing better after various in-game changes, such as returning leadership to Happy who also started playing a little less passively.

However, it wasn't enough of an improvement for Envy to keep Timothée "DEVIL" Démolon despite a first place at Gfinity CS:GO Invitational, as they brought in veteran SIXER instead. Since then the Frenchmen have looked more or less on the same level as before the change, finishing 5th-8th at WESG Regional Finals Europe (where they ran into Virtus.pro early) and 5th-6th at ESL Pro League Season 4 Finals.

At Northern Arena Montreal, Envy grabbed a semi-final finish following a loss to G2, and since met OpTic twice with no success, in ELEAGUE Season 2's group stage and ECS Season 2 Finals' semis.

EnVyUs have a tough road ahead

While they have quite a few results against other teams in the qualifier, they will not get to play some of them this time due to the modified format which uses seeding, as OpTic, G2 and CLG share the same pool with Envy. Considering the poor results the Frenchmen have had against the first two mentioned, that modification works in Envy' favor. Instead they'll face some of the better match-ups, the first of which being Immortals whom they defeated in ECS groups narrowly.

Any match-up against the top-ten teams will be a hard one for Envy but not impossible, especially if they get to play Cobblestone or Dust2. As usual, a lot will come down to the swing-vote apEX and whether he will help kennyS carry nV through matches.

While their French rivals Envy have been switching things up, G2 have remained the same, both in terms of the lineup, the roles and playstyle.

However, that hasn't been working very well for shox's team lately, as they've been but a shadow of themselves at the last several events ever since they placed second at SL i-League StarSeries S2 Finals.

Some of their results in the past three months include a last place at ESL One New York, two quarter-final finishes at the hands of SK at EPICENTER: Moscow and at IEM Oakland, and a group stage exit at ELEAGUE Season 2.

Those results don't match those of an elite-level team, a status they're beginning to lose as suggested by their rank, but a lot of their defeats came from teams who have already secured their place at the ELEAGUE Major. G2 should still be favored against nearly everyone below them, perhaps apart from Immortals who thrashed them at IEM Oakland on Cobblestone, and have a solid chance against those above.

In a two months long period following the off-season change from Alec "Slemmy" White to autimatic, Cloud9 have risen up the ranks with fantastic results, a semi-finals finish at StarSeries, second places at Northern Arena - Toronto and DreamHack Bucharest, and a big title at ESL Pro League Season 4 Finals.

However, since the Cloud9's culmination in Brazil, their results have dropped off significantly with group stage exits at IEM Oakland, DreamHack ZOWIE Open Winter and ECS Season 2 Finals.

The team seems to be running out of fuel, having traveled across three continents to seven events in as many weeks. That might cost them dearly, as the Main Qualifier is the most important one of all of them.

Cloud9 might be running out of fuel

The individual players aren't as consistently good as they were during their successful run, including the two stars autimatic and Stewie2K, both of whom hit their lowest point as of late at IEM Oakland, while n0thing's form has dipped since then as well.

As Cloud9 were placed in the lowest pool of teams due to their loss to Immortals at the Americas Minor, their route through the qualifier will likely be very hard. Their first match-up is FaZe, to whom they lost on the last two occasions, and there are few tough ones even in the middle group of teams, such as Immortals.

At the same time as Cloud9 began fading away, FaZe rose to the occasion and started delivering results with leadership assumed by karrigan and kioShiMa returning to the lineup.

In the past month, FaZe have been one of the busiest teams, as they took part in iBUYPOWER Masters, IEM Oakland, ELEAGUE Season 2 playoffs and ECS Season 2 Finals.

Over those four events, they've garnered three semi-final finishes and a 5th-6th place. While they had solid results against everyone else, FaZe lost their last two series to OpTic quite one-sidedly, which is likely the only match-up they'll be afraid of.

As they're part of seeding pool 1, they'll be able to avoid NiP, who stood in their way at IEM Oakland, and a scary opponent in Dignitas, but also a good match-up in the form of an underperforming mousesports. When we eliminate those, there are few teams who can take on FaZe in their current form, especially in best-of-one's where they'll be able to take out three maps.

Much like Cloud9, Dignitas also bit off more than they could chew, as they spent most of the past two months travelling from event to event, back and forth between Europe and the Americas.

Dignitas' rise after the addition of Magisk looked similarly to Cloud9's, as the new player became one of their stars while the team continuously improved until they reached the highest step, at EPICENTER: Moscow in the Danes' case.

The similarity to Cloud9 doesn't stop there, as since their big win in Russia, Dignitas have been unable to replicate that success at the following events. At ESL Pro League Finals, they were a win away from playoffs but couldn't close out Mirage against Cloud9, while at DreamHack Winter they simply fell apart, unable to win versus two teams significantly below their level, Kinguin and FlipSid3.

Magiskb0Y is back in the picture

Placing first in their group at ELEAGUE, Dignitas were set on a collision course with SK, whom they faced for the first time in a series, and fell short after all three maps. Magisk then had to travel back to Europe for school exams while the team used Valdemar "valde" Bjørn Vangså at ECS Season 2 Finals and sustained another loss to SK, this time in the group stage while the Brazilians used Ricardo "fox" Pacheco.

Disregarding the breakdown at DreamHack and the stand-in situation at ECS Season 2 Finals, Dignitas' form doesn't look so bad, but it's unlikely they won't be affected by all the travel, as they have few means of staying in shape and getting much-needed practice.

They have a breather in the form of Spirit in the first round, but things will start to get rough from there on. Fortunately for them, they will avoid two scary teams, NiP and FaZe, thanks to being in the same pool.

OpTic are yet another team who changed lineups and went on to improve to a level which allowed them to win a big event.

After a couple of solid showings at ESL One New York at ESL Pro League Season 4 Finals, they triumphed at a smaller event, Northern Arena - Montreal, with an important series win over G2 in the grand final.

OpTic stumbled at DreamHack ZOWIE Open Winter due to a second bad result against Cloud9 after Pro League, but they got back on their feet just in time for ELEAGUE playoffs. There they dominated mousesports and FaZe before celebrating a title following wins on Cobblestone and Overpass versus Astralis.

The same two teams ended up in ECS Season 2 grand final after OpTic broke their Cloud9 curse in groups and eliminated Envy in semis. That time it was Astralis who won Overpass, OpTic's pick, and Train for the second time to snatch the title for themselves.

With two grand final finishes in a row, OpTic are on the best form out of all teams at the Main Qualifier. Plus, a solid map pool with four very good maps (Cobblestone, Cache, Train and Overpass) will allow them to switch their bans around depending on the opponent.

Lastly, we have NiP, who found themselves in a situation where they have to qualify for the Major for the first time in the history of CS:GO, as they exited ESL One Cologne in groups following FlipSid3's upset win.

The Swedes had to play with Mikail "Maikelele" Bill from September to early November due to pyth's injury, but they made the best out of a bad situation, grabbing the title at StarSeries, placing 3rd-4th at ESL Pro League Season 4 Finals and qualifying for ELEAGUE playoffs.

Once pyth came back, NiP surprised everyone once again, adding another title to their name at IEM Oakland after a one-sided quarter-final with Immortals and extremely close series with FaZe and SK.

It's hard to imagine NiP not qualifying

The ELEAGUE Season 2 playoffs saw NiP exit early, losing to Astralis for the first time in 14 months on LAN while f0rest and friberg continued to play well and the rest couldn't put up consistently good numbers.

GeT_RiGhT and company rarely lose to teams below their level, which makes it hard to imagine they wouldn't be able to qualify. The first seeding pool will allow NiP to avoid FaZe and Dignitas, two match-ups they've had problems with in the past. Apart from those two, there aren't too many in which NiP would be in big danger.

The Main Qualifier kicks off today at 16:00 with the first round of the Swiss format. Keep an eye out for the viewer's guide, in which you'll find the full schedule and talent lineup.

Agree with the first 4 picks. I think IMT has a better chance than Godsent and maybe even G2 though.
I feel G2 and IMT are quite similar. Both would need Shox/Scream and Hen1/Felps to really step up to advance to the majors. Would be quite an interesting match up if both the teams get to play each other and are on top form :)

That could very well happen too! It could turn out to be a similar story to what happened with Dignitas and C9. These 2 teams won a tournament each and fell of quite drastically.
I don't think that will happen to optic because these guys generally play really aggressive and tend to switch up their play style in between quite comfortably. While I don't think they'll win another big tournament soon, but they won't fall off like C9 did.

Nice, but I'm really concerned for teams like G2, NV, Godsent, and C9. Teams that really should be at the major, but are doing so poorly that they have a real chance to get kicked out in the qualifier.
On the other side, a good chance for other teams to step in and have take a shot at a major, like Tyloo, Renegades, Immortals)

I think you are right about that. The teams mentioned there can have games where they seem lost and have little of anything to pull from their pockets.
Weirdly enough, my gut says nV is the least likely to lose their mojo, ie. the highest low, but I can defo see them go all the way thru a 2-2 score to make it in the end.

Don't care who qualifies just hope C9 don't would be a prefect ending to the year honestly. People want to fanboy Ska and Shroud just because C9 had one fluke win and now look at them shit af can't want to watch them not qualify for the 2nd major in a row and hopefully get dropped.

I don't think any C9 fans are fanboying over ska or shroud. They all recognize that they are the two weakest players on the team. Their arguments are usually that there would be no better NA replacements for ska and shroud or that they haven't been able to find success in Stewie's system. I really can't find anyone that thinks too highly of ska and shroud right now, even if they would be hesitant to drop them.

Do you even realize how large Skadoodle and Shroud's fanbase are? "I don't think any C9 fans are fanboying over ska or shroud" It's literally the only reason they're still on the team. Even when they had their little bit of success after ESL I still said they need to get rid of Ska & Shroud and everyone was like stop talking shit they just won something they don't need changes and it's been all downhill from there as expected they can't even get out of groups of events anymore. Anyway those 2 need to go, Stewie needs to play a role where he can just focus on his game play and they need a real IGL and someone who can actually AWP. They already have 2 solid af riflers Stewie/Autimatic, n0thing is like whatever to me if they keep him or not he isn't a very good player and had several years across different CS Games to prove he was but he never did, to inconsistent, sloppy and brain dead in game but he has really sick aim.

People have been shitting all over ska and shroud, you clearly haven't been paying attention dumb ass, even when shroud was doing good at EPL and second on the team, people still somehow managed to shit all over him. Analysts/etc have mentioned it before, even steel, the system they have in place is for stewie/tim to thrive, calling around himself, ska/shroud need more help than stewie can give them, someone like dazed/sean.